


Stories, Myths and Living Legends

by SC_Mercury



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Crime Family, F/F, Found Family, Mag Raised Ben, Other, Reunions, They all need a hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22419244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SC_Mercury/pseuds/SC_Mercury
Summary: They grow up with stories.Stories of legends, heroes and tales of worlds far, far away.One day, one by one, they become stories themselves, by choice or not.
Relationships: Benzaiten Steel & Juno Steel, Buddy Aurinko/Vespa, Peter Nureyev & Jet Sikuliaq, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Rita & Jet Sikuliaq
Comments: 7
Kudos: 52





	1. Chapter 1

Benzaiten remembers when he was younger, he lived with his brother and mother. He remembers how often they’d hold their tongue around her, and how they’d tip toe out of the house to meet with their friends, whose names are some of the many he’s forgotten over the years. He remembers someone coming into their room one night, and that very night he had left Mars for the first time. 

He had been taken by Mag, a man he trusted now, but he was far too young to understand what had happened. Mag had taken care of him, taught him to steal and survive on Brahma under the Guardian Angel System, and no matter how much Mag tried to get Ben to trust him unconditionally, he remembered his brother and his mother, and never took Mag’s word at face value. 

Mag raised him on stories. Stories of the Saviour of Brahma, how he’ll be loved planet-wide, and when Mag tells him of his plan to take down the Guardian Angel System, Ben does his own research. He double checks facts and floor plans and small details that don't matter but he can't risk it, not when there's so much more on stake than when he used to sneak out with Juno and their friends. 

He both trusts and distrusts Mag, with every reason not to trust him, and yet so many to trust him a great deal. He’s protected Benten since he was whisked away from Mars, and for all his lies, they’ve been small and white. Mag keeps telling him to focus on the job at hand instead of the moves he’ll make in the future, focus on the guard and the key in his pocket, but Benten knows he’s holding something from him, even as he’s told of their great plan to liberate Brahma. 

Benzaiten gets told that he's going to _be_ a story someday. **_A legend_**. Of course, as Buddy would say: a legend is an old story, a dead thing, frozen forever 

He’s told he’s making things better, and he sees it with his own eyes every time they redirect shipments, helping people feed themselves and their families. 

Benzaiten Steel is raised as the son of a great thief, not only grows up with stories of other thieves, but stories of revolutionaries. heroes, and people who do the right thing, no matter the consequences. 

* * *

Juno Steel also grows up on stories, but ones of a different nature, ones that his friend Mick tells, the far and few between that Ma tells, and the lies he weaves. 

When Ben disappeared, Sarah Steel changed. She once said that her twins were her reason for living, but when Juno watches his Ma alternate between doting on him and hating him, it’s hard to believe. Her good days are rare, between droves of her raving and screaming at Juno before apologising, and ‘little monster’ becomes a favourite term of endearment for him, when it isn’t an insult. 

He sneaks out to Mick’s house when he has to get away, hiding from what he knows is waiting at home. He asks Mick to tell him stories, to keep his mind off what’s happened this time, and Mick never asks. He knows his best friend has a hard home life, and when Ben disappeared, no one took it harder than Juno, though it doesn’t show. Anyone who didn’t know Juno like Mick and Sasha knew Juno would’ve assumed Sarah was hit the hardest. 

He listens when his mother tells him stories, knowing that she’s buying him, like she bought him and Ben when they were younger, but he lets her. He takes her stories and weaves them into his person, shaping who he becomes. 

Juno Steel is 19, and he is his mother’s child, Mick’s best friend, Sasha’s friend, himself. Stories are his lifeblood, and maybe in another life he would’ve grown to hate stories. When something is so woven into you, it becomes incredibly hard to avoid. In another life he would’ve joined the HCPD, tried to make a difference that way, but here, now, Juno Steel applies for a job at Northstar Entertainment. He is his mother’s son and stories are woven into his blood, and he gets the job. He makes a difference this way, because in any world, Juno Steel is always tied to stories one way or another. 

Juno learns his way around stories, his core built around the stories told to him by Sarah, Mick, and the lies that he made to survive. 

* * *

Peter Nureyev, in contrast, does not grow up on stories. Instead, he is raised by stories, and, in his own right, becomes a story. His mothers are not myths, or fairy tales, but real, and present, and he knows they love him. 

They found him when he was a child on Brahma, starving and desperate to the point of trying to pickpocket Buddy for the creds that could pay for his next meal, regardless if the Guardian Angel System caught him. It had been Buddy who caught him, and given a year, he moved onto the Carte Blanche with Buddy & Vespa. 

He watches, learns and lives. He grows up to live and love and steal and leave the world better when he has left, and he grows up knowing only to be Peter Nureyev, and no one else. 

Peter watches his moms go on heists, one after the other. Some out of necessity, others because they seem fun and whoever they’re stealing from need to be taken down a peg. He watches as Vespa falls, helpless as Buddy is dragged into the ship. He watches Buddy fall too, destroying herself physically as she waits, day after day at the top of the lighthouse, for a woman they know won’t come back. She lets the radiation eat away at her face, lets the pain from losing her wife and love rip away at her mentality, and Peter lets the same happen to him. 

He slips away into himself, letting the job envelope him, focusing on the job and forgetting Jet, his closest friend, almost forgets his mother, Buddy. 

Peter Nureyev was raised by legends, and when one of them disappears, he runs from these legends and lets himself become a ghost in his own story, because all stories must come to an end eventually. 

* * *

It doesn’t take long for Juno to become the head writer of Northstar, and when Ramses O’Flaherty shows his face, he’s overlooked for the lady who’s already accomplished what he had hoped to. Juno was his mother’s child, and he had a gift for storytelling. 

Sarah Steel had gotten calmer, and Juno had taken to asking her for advice, especially when it came to Andromeda. She and Juno find ways to work together, without violence or lashing out, and one day Juno asks Sarah to watch a stream, the eighth Andromeda film. The end of an era, a series, and in the credits, she’s credited for coming up with the hero who takes on Andromeda’s mantle. She is credited as a script advisor. She is not a good parent, but she is better than she could’ve been. Juno doesn’t forgive her, not even when she apologises before he comes head writer. She didn’t expect him to, not after years or floating between doting on him and lashing out at him. That wasn’t something she could ever expect him to forgive. 

When Ramses O’Flaherty shows his face, Sarah Steel is not an idiot and recognises the man who was once known as Jack Takano. Juno is none the wiser, though when Ramses proposes his changes for Northstar, no one listens to the old man with money, but instead turn to the lady who has brought a new age the company, who holds so much more than Ramses had ever expected. 

When Juno starts to slash any record of Jack Takano from the Andromeda series with the help of his secretary, someone who technically was never offered a job, but has become such a crucial part of Juno’s life, when he hands the script for the final Andromeda movie to Sarah Steel, Ramses knows he can’t touch the lady, not without destroying himself in the process. So he watches the only opportunity he had at his plans fruition get ripped from his grasp. 

* * *

They find her again, with a debtors tag no less. Peter rips the hood off her, having only seen a glimpse of green hair and letting his hopes rise for the first time in years, and as Vespa flees the room, he feels a small flicker of a fire light in his chest. The light returns to Buddy’s eyes, too. He sees it when he turns to see if she saw his Ma too. Peter wouldn’t be able to say afterwards if it was the hope or watching Jet’s morals change in the previous five years that drove him to pull her hood instead of shooting her, but maybe Jet had grown on him more than he realised. 

He stands off to a side with Jet, waiting at the top of the lighthouse with Buddy, and when Vespa steps out of the shadows, the flicker in his chest grows to a roaring flame, because they'd found his Ma, the woman who'd been dead for five years, and that's the night Buddy brings up the cure mother prime to them, and the night they start looking for teammates. 

All stories come to an end, but they were going to get the sequel they deserved.

* * *

They start with Benzaiten, but they don’t know him as that. He’s the famed ‘Robin Hood’ of the Outer Rim, of the _galaxy,_ dubbed after the old earthen fairy tale, but he’s the thief with no name. A new job, a new name, a new bird and a new flower. That’s how Ben had been living for decades, since he left Brahma. He left no trace of himself at the scenes of his crimes, save for a marker. To claim it as his work. A single, black rose, left where it would be seen no matter what. He didn’t know when it started, or why a black rose, but he can guess it’s because of the lingering memories of his twin, of a childhood that wasn’t as lonely as the streets of Brahma. 

Brahma. He remembers the day he left so vividly, sometimes he thinks he’s back there when he dreams of it. He begged Mag to put the core back. He begged, he threatened. Benzaiten is and has been and always will be at the intersection between bravery and cowardice, he was brave enough to stay despite the lies Mag has fed him, but too much of a coward to call him on it. He’d always been too afraid to pay enough attention to his loved ones’ flaws. Mag knew this all too well. He called Ben on it. On his empty threats. He heard the guards come closer. He made a choice. 

His threats turned to actions, and while he wanted to protect the people of Brahma, he _wants_ to protect the people of Brahma, no one would be able to control the chaos below if New Kinshasa fell. He curses himself for not asking more questions, seeing the flaws earlier, and he tells himself over and over again that it wasn’t cowardice to refuse to martyr himself. A martyr and a legend are both dead things, and Benten wouldn’t die before he could protect the people he holds dear. He held a city, a world for ransom, hiding behind a fake name, and despite himself, becomes a story. 

Mag dies and Brahma remains caged, and Benzaiten Steel as Peter Ransom is the Angel of Brahma. He watches the news streams as he sits in the shuttle off planet, and realises what he’s become. A myth, a legend, and he tells himself he doesn’t like this story, this end. He can’t bring Mag back, but he’ll write a new story, one with an ending Mag might’ve approved of. No matter how long it takes. 

It takes him across the galaxy, stealing from the rich and giving back to the suffering and the poor, because even though his memories of Oldtown are hazy now, he remembers hearing tales from his friends, from Mick, who’s name he’s forgotten, of his home struggles, from Sasha and Annie, their names too are long lost in the pit of his memories, and he wants to help. He starts travel away from Brahma, and it takes so, _so_ long, stopping on every planet possible to take jobs, steal enough from some rich fuck to pay for his travels, make enough connections to keep himself going, and give back wherever and whenever he can. 

No one ever seems to notice he stole from weapon designers and their patrons who provided for dictatorships across the Outer Rim, and he hasn’t found a way to guarantee Brahma’s freedom, but the Guardian Angel System is silent for the most part, and Ben is so, so close.

He hears his name, ‘Robin Hood’, ‘Black Rose’, on every true crime stream, in news articles and on the streets, and convinces himself to keep going, because despite his negative image in streams, he hears how he’s helped on the streets. He hears how the money he left on the doorstep of a struggling mother’s home on Jupiter help her find her footing, pay for her children’s education, and he keeps going. He hears about the bakery down the street from his hotel on Venus that was kept afloat with the anonymous donation, the writer who finally got xer book published and was slowly becoming a best seller, and he keeps going. 

It brings him to this vault, to a gladiolus atop a tan envelope addressed only to ‘Black Rose’, and the letter inside had only the words ‘Cure Mother Prime. Cerberus Province Lighthouse. Mars.’ and a date. He spent hours debating over the letter, after the heist. Mars was his end goal, yes. His journey across the galaxy had always been with the intent of ending on Mars, searching for his lost twin and mother, but this had brought a new meaning to his journey. He takes the next shuttle, spending every last cent he had to skip the planets and stops he had planned before Mars, but he gets there. 

In the lighthouse, Buddy was expecting a composed, elegant thief. She wasn’t prepared to see Benzaiten Steel, posing as Jay Rose, dishevelled, poor and rough, step through those doors. However, she thinks nothing of it, and offers him a place on the Carte Blanche. He negotiates, asking about pay, their targets, the plan, and when Buddy agrees to his terms, he takes the place. 

Buddy tells him about Vespa, Peter and Jet, and tells them of their next teammate, a hacker with an incredible skill. Neither of them know who might come with said hacker, not yet. 

* * *

Rita receives a message on her comms one night, while working out a schedule and project with Juno. It catches her off guard, cutting her sentence short. It takes Juno by surprise too, Rita rarely stopped talking for more than a minute at a time, and much less in the middle of a sentence. Her voice is tentative when she starts again, not quite as sure as Juno was used to his secretary being. 

She tells him of her side job, of leaking floor plans to secure buildings across the galaxy to thieves to pay well enough, of sending passwords to bank accounts and savings of every corrupt capitalist company and political leaks that have swung the tides in elections on other planets. She tacks on that she hasn’t touched Northstar or Hyperion, but Juno doesn’t seem to be listening. He remembers reading articles about leaks that came out of nowhere, of some of the most secure buildings in the galaxy being robbed blind, and he wonders how much he’s been underestimating his secretary. 

He has no idea where this conversation is heading, the business they had been discussing previously long forgotten, but he listens, wondering what Rita might’ve gotten herself caught up in now. It hits him like a truck. She holds nothing back, talking about how she helped out Buddy Aurinko a few weeks back, and how she’s now been offered a more permanent job with her crime family, but she won’t go unless Mistah Steel could come with her, if he even wanted to, and how the only words that had _really_ been in the message were ‘Cure Mother Prime’ and ‘Cerberus Light house’ and really, she knew that Buddy knew that she could figure it out from just those words, because a few weeks ago wasn’t the only time they’d worked together and really Mistah Steel she just wants to know if crime was something he’d ever considered before. 

Juno had stood before Rita had finished talking, putting away the papers he had been looking at, and was pulling his comms out as his secretary came to the end of her sentence. She could see the smile on his face, and it was a kind of smile that gave her the chills sometimes, because it was one of the few things Rita couldn’t interpret. He called Mick, his best friend and offered him a job, something he knew Mick couldn’t hold for long on his own, and within a week Mick had taken a temporary position as Juno’s fill in, while he and Rita took a ‘personal trip’. 

He leaves Sarah to write, gives her the freedom to make two new heroes. They hurt, and show there’s not just one way to respond the people hurting you. One was named Hera, the other Ben. She gives them a story where they aren’t punished for not forgiving those who hurt them, and their different responses aren’t criticized either. She creates heroes for Northstar, shows their mental health issues, and show them fighting to heal and get better, and turn their anger against those who hurt them into a sword and shield to protect people. Their films are dedicated to Benzaiten, and only Juno understands what Sarah Steel has done with them. She takes her stories and turns them into explanations for actions, to show it’s okay to have different responses to trauma and mental illness, and that it should never be an excuse to act out. Juno understands that she realises she might never be forgiven for what she’s done, and that she’s made her peace with it. 

Benten sees them, on his shuttle back to Mars. He cant help the tears that come from his eyes, seeing the credits with his mothers name and both him and Juno credited as an inspiration. He won't tell anyone, but he is so, so glad Juno and Sarah are doing so much better. Better than they would've with him, he thinks when the stream ends 

Ramses is kept in his place, as a patron and advisor, but nothing more. His money means nothing to Northstar now, not with the Steels in charge. 


	2. Update

Hi! Unfortunately this isn't the second half of the story, I haven't actually gotten very far with writing it yet

Which brings me to this update, I actually plan on rewriting chapter 1 and posting it alongside chapter 2 in one go! I got a couple comments recently here after I had honestly forgotten about this fic and after reading back what I already had, I was nowhere near happy keeping it as it is right now, considering it's been a year since I wrote this and my writing has made vast improvements since then!  
  


I sadly can't give you a time frame for when the rewrite will be done, but I'll keep it under this work and just replace the first chapter when I upload the second, but hopefully it will be soon! I'm working around college work & classes right now, but I'm going to try my best to keep y'all from waiting too long this time!


End file.
